Ive been a miner for the better part of 3 1\2 years. In my opinion and experience, its not how big a fleet ,or research, or defense you have,, its how big are your mines. The thought process of a true miner is almost always, mines first , research second, other things last. That is until your mines are up in the high 20s or low 30s. It is also important while building mines, to keep them even ,across all colonies, as the output will be a little higher that way versus having them at a bunch of different levels. This is very important in your early game, and will contribute to the speed you get your account built up. For example, it took me two years of trial and error to get my first account to the rank of 250. whereas I know people who have made it to the top 100 in one year, by investing in large mines. Most of the really strong accounts in ogame have mines looking something like this, level 32 metal 29crystal and level 28 or 29 deut. A lot of players say that miners shouldnt worry about building big deut mines, but I have advanced farther in the past by selling my deut , to help me get the next highest mines.In doing this Ive made friends with big fleets who sometimes will be willing to protect you,(if he has a moon closeby.

I'm a miner myself in uni 37. I started two weeks later when the universe was new and I've got myself ranked up to mid 50's/60's.

High metal mines and crystal mines are nice but those deut mines are becoming very important late game. Try to get some sort of trade contract that you can sell your daily deuterium production each day to a high, active fleeter. To find such a person try to take a look on the statistics with fleetpoints, look at the HoF section of universe 4 or open a thread on the Ogame Trade section of universe 4.

This helped me out a lot in uni37 and as I'm a fleeter in universe 4 it's nice to have someone shipping some deut to you in time.

For the record, my universe 4 mines are now 34/29/30.Mines are the future!